Despite those who want to recover creationism or put meteorologists under the horses’ feet, science does not stand still. The year we ended was full of bad news related to climate change, the spread of bird flu or Trump’s victory in the United States, but 2024 also brought us some very hopeful advances, especially in the field of biomedicine. .
One of the best news of the year was the announcement by the Government that it will expand the number of congenital diseases detected in newborns through the heel test and will cover up to 23 pathologies by early 2025. This measure aims to reduce the inequalities between territories that we have denounced so much in elDiario.es and that star in the recent documentary “Life in a Drop.” Unfortunately, the rectification came in the year in which Federico Mayor Zaragoza left us, one of the pioneers who helped the extension of this test in our country and a firm defender of establishing access to the heel test as a human right.
The year of the CAR-T
In terms of the fight against cancer, 2024 was a great year for immunotherapy, and in particular for those known as CAR-T therapies, which allow the patient’s immune defenses to be trained to recognize tumor cells and eliminate them from the body. Until now, these therapies had been very efficient for blood cancers, such as leukemias, but for the first time, very promising advances are being made in solid tumors. The most recent example is the clinical trial in which scientists from Stanford University have achieved complete remission of an incurable brain tumor in a 17-year-old patient.
In addition to these results in the treatment of brain tumors in childrenwhich the creator of CAR-T therapies told us in an interview, the cost of treatment is being reduced thanks to networks of public centers, such as the one led by the Hospital Clínic of Barcelona, which offers its patients this immunotherapy developed at the industry margin, for a price four times lower and very good results.
In the fight against childhood cancer, a team of researchers from the Biomedical Research Institute (IRB Barcelona) and the Sant Joan de Déu Research Institute (HSJD-IRSJD), has carried out a pioneering study that has allowed them to confirm the suspicion that The most aggressive childhood tumors are essentially different from cancer in adults and in many cases babies are born with the alteration that predisposes them to suffer from this disease.
Artificial intelligence and health
The use of artificial intelligence has also brought us good news when it comes to health. A team of Spanish researchers, for example, has trained an algorithm capable of differentiating cancer cells from normal cells, in addition to detecting the earliest phases of viral infection inside the cells (which join other early detection systems of cancer). And, in China, a group of scientists has found a relationship between some metabolic disorders such as diabetes and fatty liver and changes in facial temperature, thanks to which these ailments may be able to be detected early using AI in the future.
Thanks to artificial intelligence, in 2024 a new expansion of the ‘Atlas of human cells’ was also possible, which promises to revolutionize cell biology, and the Human Connectome Project reached a new milestone, with the publication of the first complete atlas of the fly brain; a mapping of 140,000 neurons and more than 50 million connections that will advance our understanding of how neural circuits work
New gene therapies
Some of the most revolutionary advances in biomedicine have occurred in the promising field of gene therapies. Thus, for example, the pioneering transplant of reprogrammed stem cells has managed to reverse diabetes for the first time in a 25-year-old patient; a transplant of his own reprogrammed cells that has allowed him to begin producing insulin without the need for drugs.
Equally exciting was the clinical trial that restored hearing in both ears to five children born with deafness caused by a genetic mutation, a therapy that opens a possible avenue of treatment for thousands of babies and other types of congenital deafness. Thanks to this treatment, not only was hearing function restored, but the children also experienced better speech perception, acquired the ability to localize and determine the position of sound, and were even able to distinguish music and dance to it.
Prosthesis to walk again
A field that leaves spectacular advances every year is that of neuroprostheses, technological implants that allow people with different degrees of spinal cord injury to recover movement. In December we learned about the spectacular progress that allowed two spinal cord injured people to regain movement thanks to deep brain stimulation.
In 2024, the first bionic prosthesis that works with magnets instead of electrodes was also tested, a bionic leg that allows amputees to climb stairs and avoid obstacles, as well as a non-invasive device that stimulates the spinal cord using external electrodes that improved function. of the arm and hand in 43 of 60 patients with tetraplegia.
The “Ozempic revolution”
Finally, 2024 was the year of the consecration of the so-called “Ozempic revolution”, the development of new effective drugs to combat diabetes and obesity that has earned its creators recognition with the Princess of Asturias award. In addition to being effective for weight loss in cases of morbid obesity, the possible protective effects of these treatments on the brain are being investigated in models of diseases such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s, as well as protective effects on organs such as the heart, kidneys or liver, and its contribution to the reduction of blood pressure, which is a cardiac risk factor.
As if this were not promising, a group of CNIO researchers this year identified a molecular signaling pathway between muscle and brain that regulates the desire to continue doing physical exercise and that could be used in the future to design drugs like those that already exist for the appetite. “We have discovered how our muscle controls the desire to exercise and how it regulates whether we want to stop doing it,” Guadalupe Sabio explained to elDiario.es. The finding could lead to treatments that promote the desire to exercise, which could be very useful to people with different pathologies related to being overweight. In other words: a kind of Ozempic aimed at the desire to play sports, the resolution we all make for the New Year.
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